Five Poems

today each man and woman is a raindrop
and the truth, a shaft of steady daylight

today we see the coloured blooms that lay
within us, dry as seeds, through wintering

and we remember that every sphere of dew
holds, at its deepest centre, an image of the sun

your hand in mine and two stars are shared between us;
the stars of your eyes and the hardness of this body
burns away like insubstantial rain

Dispersion

morning sun scattering from the prism
and even the cynic is caught in the show
all the physical properties of light
colours trancing, in shifts on the wall,

it doesn’t matter that some have taken colour for their life’s work;
join with the eyes, that bathe in rainbows, or define
light in proofs as beautiful as songs

it is all praise; a reason to grasp this mystery with both hands,
to watch the answers sift, between fingers, like daylight through glass

In Search Of Jia Dao’s Buddha

cloud obscures the hill
winds change; a hill obscuring cloud
they say this is the way with gladness
long summer days when the cherry-blossoms admitted
only reddish light into the partial shade

and we sat on garden benches hoping for direct sun
now ash-coloured dawn through bare limbs and the quiet haze of rain

I have risen from these wet pines; to seek the master in the fog entangled hills
and leading me, through this cloud, each now and then, a scent of mountain herbs

A Meditation On The Age Of Love

to be the earth with its one satellite
and the moon that circles its single joy

we’ve been heard to say this romance was invented
in the poetry of Aquitaine; by the troubadours of Provence

how can we miss the antiquity of affection? in a world
of tidal pull and lunar cycle, one arising; and the other, becoming

in a life where we walked, lake-sides in the heave of spring,
to watch the waters, deep and cool as night, gloss with paleness only seen
in the space between the lines of a love poem

Advice To A Traveller

for months and years now you’ve sought
through a magnitude of stars for answers

but having seen your soul’s stomping ground
may I suggest you rest from this immensity

look for the red aphids that trail among
the lichened stones in the dead of winter

you will realise your delusion
when you cannot balance
the universe on their backs

B.T. Joy has had work published in Toasted Cheese previously as well as with such journals as Obsessed With Pipework, Presence, Canon’s Mouth, Paper Wasp, Bottle Rockets, Mu, and Frogpond, among others. Email: BTJ0005uk[at]aol.com